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Last Sunday the members of our top Sunday Zone Group (age 10 upwards) produced an impressive, even daunting, list of theological questions at the end of the service. Now I have to say that there is one tried and tested response that the clergy can give to these sorts of questions and that is: " That is a very good question; keep asking those questions and as you grow older you will discover the answer." But one of the questions that was asked is one that we might consider today: Why did Jesus die on the cross?
Now in one way, the two boys who asked that question ought to have known the answer; after all, they are both confirmed. But a Confirmation course can only convey something of what the Church understands and teaches about Jesus' death and the vicar who opts out by saying "as you grow older you will discover the answer " is in many ways right: our ability to understand the big questions in life and faith changes with maturity and experience.
When the risen Jesus joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus - unrecognised by them, of course - he said that their reading of the words of the prophets should have enabled them to understand that it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory. In other words it wasn't an accident or a mistake; it was necessary.
On the road to Emmaus the words " It was necessary " did not come from a teacher or a bystander or a hindsight moralist. They came from Jesus himself and he was the one who had been through it. Imagine someone who has suffered at the whim of others saying, " It was necessary ". We don't tend to see suffering and death that way; we see it as an aberration and a wrong. Jesus said, " It was necessary " . The risen Lord is completely at one with the events and as he travels, unknown, with the disciples so he moves them away from the view that something terrible and wrong has happened to the understanding that what has happened is in some way necessary and right. That I think is the most extraordinary thing about the Christian faith; you could almost say that that is a definining moment, a paradox that defies all the assumptions of the wisdom of the world: the first and greatest of many.
So when a child or a young Christian says " Why did Jesus die on the Cross?" , we could do much worse than say well, in the first instance, it was necessary. That of itself sets our thinking on the right path and ongoing encounter with the Christian faith and fellowship, and experience and maturing understanding of human nature and the hopes and the sorrows of our world will answer the question "Why necessary?" The way the narratives of the resurrection are told present us with doorways or paths through which or on which we may safely go. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe;" "he goes before you into Galilee" and finally, "was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?". Go through those doors. Walk upon those paths and however baffling life may be, you will not lose your way, you will be safe.
Amen.
